


Shipping It Stargate Style

by TCGM (wkenfield)



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow, Stargate - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26643724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wkenfield/pseuds/TCGM
Summary: We know what happened to the Odyssey. The bubble timeline never occurred and Teal'c saved the day by sacrificing decades of his life. Or do we? Tampering with time is rarely that simple. What happens when reality shatters and the Ascended have to pick up the pieces? A bullied girl in a locker becomes one of the most advanced ships imagined. Rated T for Worm-style swearing.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	1. Unending Odyssey

Shipping It Stargate Style

**Chapter 01**

_Unending Odyssey_

In one universe of one multiverse, a girl was trapped in her locker by her one time almost sister, now mortal enemy.

In one universe of an entirely different multiverse, far away across the sea of existence, a starship was exploding from the beam of energy that lanced through it.

The girl screamed one final time before her vocal cords broke.

The ship… began to put itself back together.

If it was just a temporal reversion, the fabric of that universe wouldn't have cared. Much.

But the people on that ship sought to bring something back.

Even with _that_ , the universe would've probably been okay. An uninhabited galaxy or two burned away to solve the paradox. Not really a problem.

However, the inhabitants of teat ship tried to bring back a person.

A soul.

One of the most complex forms of matter an energy possible. The apex of the path every universe's collapse-expand cycle set forth upon.

So much information, and so temporally sensitive, that the fabric of that universe tore itself apart.

It was only put back together by the frantic efforts of that universe's ascended beings.

They were left with a conundrum, because there were now _two_ occurrences of the ship and everyone on it.

One was fine, and was about to initiate the time bubble. It had the displaced soul, which, despite all the chaos, arrived safe and sound.

The other ship, still locked in a time bubble, was almost completely destroyed.

The ascended did what this universe's particular blend always did to solve problems. Out of sight, out of mind.

They tossed the timelocked ship out of their multiverse.

The entire aborted timeline, ship included, was ejected into the space and time between space _or_ time. Wrapped up in a tiny little universe barely 500 meters across.

It traveled for unknown eons, occasionally pinging off other multiverses like a pinball in an arcade machine. Some of the collisions had effects on the contents of the tiny universe, despite their paused state.

One gave the ship sentience.

Another gave it a soul.

Yet another imbued it and the people on it with the gift of Magic.

Finally, one multiverse didn't reject it. This one had been so damaged by a race composed of faulty Clarketech that the ship was able to slip right in.

It glanced off another tiny travelling spirit, both redirecting its course and imparting the ability to come back as a human looking girl if it ever was destroyed.

Given it was in the process of being destroyed, this activated, turning the people on board into tiny faeries and the ship into a girl. Time was still paused inside the tiny universe though, and as such, the mind of the ship failed to form.

Such are the perils of tampering with time. Not that this eventuality would end up teaching the ascended of the ship's origin universe anything. As one of their order, exiled and forced to fight by their unjust inaction, was so fond of cryptically saying; 'if you immediately know the candlelight is fire, the meal was cooked a long time ago.'

Their candlelight had been recognized as fire long ago, yet they'd rejected it due to their memories of a different type of fire.

Regardless of happenings across the sea of existence, the ship slammed into a piece of the Clarketech race that was responsible for the damage of this multiverse. Powerful, spacetime manipulating supercomputers they might be, but the power of Magic and tons of extreme 'velocity', as much as that term can apply to what exists outside space and time, built up over 'eons' of 'travel', were behind the ship's little universe.

The ship ate the planet sized piece of Clarketech like it was a snack. At the same time, due to the collision, the ship experienced its final course correction.

On January 3rd, 2011, the U.S.A.F. Odyssey slammed straight into Taylor Hebert. Due to their severely weakened states, the two became one being, merging into a sum greater than both parts.

And she woke up.

* * *

_Stars, two beings spiraling around each other-_

_-screaming battle enemies explosions shields down hull damage_ _**pain-** _

_-ages long sedate unmoving low power safe-_

_-frozen cast out collision more collisions change entry collision change consumption assimilate_ _**merge** _ _-_

Taylor woke with a gasp, banging her head on her locker.

And promptly stared in shock at the impression of her face staring back at her from the metal.

" _W-What_?" she tried to say, her surprise over _her own face staring out of the metal of her locker_ overriding the panic and fear and disgust she felt at her location.

Which she somehow knew the exact statistics of, down to the millimeter.

Her core was thrumming with unexpected new life and her crew were scrambling to figure out what went wrong with the temporal reversion-

 _Crew? Core? Temporal reversion?!_ Taylor asked herself. She shook her head to try and remove the certainties she knew to be true. _What the hell is going on?_

She half heartedly banged on the locker door once more, momentarily chalking it up to her going crazy.

She _also_ instinctively fired her sublight engines.

The poor metal door didn't just fly off the locker, it _disintegrated_ against the force and power of engines capable of accelerating her to a full 80% of lightspeed in a few seconds.

 _WHAT THE FUCK?!_ Taylor screamed in her own head, pushing herself away from the now missing door and into the sludge on her back.

The sludge which was being repelled by a shimmering blue-white field, bright enough to light up the locker from the inside.

Her _shields._

Before she could fully contemplate their existence her sublight engines flared again, forcing her hull through the back of the locker and a solid foot into the concrete wall.

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" Taylor screamed, her vocal cords repaired by her **merge**.

She hesitantly straightened up and shimmied the distance back to her locker, looking back at the impression of her spread eagled body now almost literally _punched_ into the wall.

She hadn't even _felt_ the impact. The wall provided about as much of an obstacle as a spider's web.

"Sublight engines?" Taylor asked herself under her breath, almost jumping when she received a status report on their functionality. She only managed to hold herself back with the knowledge that yes, the top of her locker, and indeed the school itself, would pose just as much of an obstacle to her as the wall had if she traveled upward.

They didn't even register on her collision detection systems. They were just _there._

Oh, and she had a hyperdrive too apparently, _whatever both of those even meant!_

Taylor started to hyperventilate. She stumbled out of her locker, her sublight engines helpfully indicating their status of being _barely_ a hundredth of a percent engaged.

Then, came the voices.

" _Colonel, what the hell is going on with the ship?_ " a nice sounding, if old, man asked.

" _I don't know Cam, I've never seen anything like this!_ " a woman's voice answered. " _The Odyssey's doing things all in it's own._ "

 _Odyssey_.

That name rang true in Taylor's head. It felt as much her name as _Taylor_ did.

U.S.A.F. X-304 Daedalus Class Deep Space Carrier _Odyssey_ , her well of new knowledge and senses informed her.

 _U.S.A.F?_ Taylor asked herself. She blinked when the answer came to her, not from her new stuff but from her… previous? knowledge. _United States Air Force? Deep_ Space _Carrier?!_

" _Maybe the ship got so bored of being_ trapped _in this time bubble it evolved its own sentience?_ " a rather mischievous, slightly European sounding woman said sarcastically.

Her voice made Taylor want to hide her valuables. Several of her armories and cargo bays proceeded to seal shut, almost subconsciously.

Because apparently she _had thos_ e _now_.

" _Oh come on, that's crazy_ ," a fourth man dismissed her.

_Crazy. Right._

Like the voice in her head had any room to talk.

The voices were silent for several seconds. Taylor worried that they'd heard her silent thoughts up until the same man continued.

" _Right, guys?_ " he hesitantly asked for confirmation.

" _Well we do have the Asgard core on board…_ " the first woman began to try and reason.

" _No way. Nuh uh. I draw the line at alive ships,_ " the first man said flatly.

" _Well_ why _don't we just ask?_ " the second woman reasoned. " _And hey, has anyone seen Muscles around? I thought he was supposed to be going back in time or something_."

Taylor was pretty sure she was crazy. She'd obviously snapped in the locker. Maybe… maybe she was still in there.

Hallucinating all this.

" _Fine! Fine! Hey Odyssey, here's a dumb question but apparently we should ask it anyways: anybody home?!_ " the second man sounded like an angry old grandpa.

Taylor saw no reason to not indulge her mental break. She was already far gone enough to experience all of this. Not much more to go.

She tried to _feel_ for a way to reply to them and got something called a comm system back in response. She, trembling, tried to pipe her voice through it and into the room the four of them were in.

She barely registered it being the engine room. _Her_ engine room.

" _H-hello?_ " she called out.

Two of them, the first man and the second woman, jumped with surprise. The second man just dropped his arms and let his head flop back with defeat.

The first woman gulped. Taylor could see all this through something called the internal sensors. Because she had those now too _, apparently_. " _Hi,_ " she said to the ceiling, shivering slightly. " _Uh… who are you?_ "

" _Y-You're the voices in my head, you tell me!_ " Taylor shot back.

Suddenly she found dossiers on all of them pulling up in her vision. Colonel Samantha Carter. Colonel Cameron Mitchell. Vala mal Daniel Jackson.

" _Nevermind, whatever this insanity is just told me,_ " she informed them. A thought of wanting the things to go away made them disappear.

Sam blinked several more times, then set her face sternly. " _Are you the Odyssey?_ " she asked, the tone of disbelief on her voice _very_ clear.

" _I-_ " Taylor started, then hesitated. She felt like the Odyssey. It… fit. Just seemed... _right._

But her human sense was still not going along for the ride her instincts were trying to sell her. Something _wasn't_ right, something was _off._

Oh god. Maybe this was a cape Mastering her. That had to be it.

She saw the feeling of _off_ as the only evidence of her possible real self fighting back against whatever Mastering was going on. To keep herself from falling any further into the illusion, Taylor clutched to that feeling like a lifeline. Then, she tried again. " _No. No, I'm not. I'm Taylor. I don't know what this crazy shit is but you'd better stop it!_ "

Wait… but if the voices were part of the Mastering...

Taylor's eyes widened in sudden realization. " _GET OUT OF MY HEAD!_ " she screamed at the possible invaders.

Her ship systems immediately went to full red alert. But she ignored that because it wasn't _possible._

" _We're not_ in _your head, kid!_ " Cameron fired back. " _We're on a ship! What are you doing in its head?!_ "

" _BULLSHIT!"_ Taylor fired back. " _You're trying to- to mind control me or something!_ "

Cameron blinked and proceeded to stare at her ceiling with disbelief. " _Mind control."_ He snorted and shook his head. " _What the hell are you talking about? That's not even possible!_ " he continued.

His complete lack of belief, not even in the idea that he could be mind controlling she, but in the concept of it in the first place, made a chink in Taylor's mental armor. " _Mind control!" she insisted. "like Mastering!"_

Daniel interrupted whatever Cameron was about to say. " _Alright, I can't be the only one who heard a capital letter there,_ " he remarked.

" _Uh, guys,_ " Vala spoke up. This interrupted Taylor from continuing the discussion. Not due to her words, but their time and, more importantly, just _where_ and in front of _what_ she was standing.

Vala was looking at one of the monitors that showed the outside. She'd previously been looking at the screen that showed the Odyssey's status.

And a screen for Taylor's external sensors. Displaying her surroundings. In her school.

" _Not now, Vala!_ " Daniel scolded her.

" _Oooh no,_ " Vala shot back. " _You do_ not _get to do that to me anymore!_ "

" _We're trying to negotiate with the entity that's taken over our ship and you're going to do this NOW?!_ " Daniel yelled back.

" _Yes!_ " Vala fired off. " _Because you've got it all wrong!_ "

" _STOP IT, ALL OF YOU!_ " Taylor screamed, collapsing to her knees and hiding her face. She just wanted this to _go away!_

The 'ship' they were on went dark. She'd shut down power to everything but life support and the internal sensors.

" _Sam,_ " Daniel asked pleasantly after a few moments. " _What just happened?_ "

Sam tried to place a crystal down on the very unique console at the back of the engine room. It clunked against the glass-like surface uselessly. " _Damn it!_ " she cursed. " _I have no idea!_ "

" _Maybe we upset the poor girl who is also now our ship?_ " Vala tersely suggested, her arms crossed.

The three others looked at her with dumbfounded expressions.

" _You really should learn to listen to me more,_ " she deadpanned, her tone kind of hurt.

" _What the hell do you mean, girl who is our ship?_ " Cameron asked.

Vala grinned and looked at the ceiling. _"Taylor?_ " she asked sweetly. " _Would you turn the lights back on please?_ "

Taylor really didn't want to. _Really_ didn't. She… was probably being Mastered.

But she looked at the remains of her locker and grimaced. Something was going on. Something immensely screwed up. _Most likely_ Mastering.

But.

There was a small chance it was something else.

Maybe… maybe she'd triggered in her locker.

It certainly fit. She shuddered as she briefly recalled the experience. Something like that was definitely Trigger Event worthy.

And maybe, just maybe, her power was weird. Perhaps it gave her four voices in her head to talk to.

She _was_ always alone. And it was uncommon knowledge on PHO, but not _rare_ knowledge, that the powers someone got always reflected themselves and their Trigger Event.

Taylor had no idea how becoming a _ship_ was related to being trapped in a school locker, but the voices to talk to part matched what she knew.

She'd prefer to believe her new theory over the one where she was being Mastered.

So, hesitantly, Taylor searched herself for a way to follow… Vala's request. After a few moments she found it. The control panel for… herself, was a set of simple switches in her mind she'd flipped on instinct in her panic. She hesitated, closed her eyes, and flipped them back on.

The systems of the ship all came back online. And Taylor watched her new… _crew_ with the eyes of a hawk, powered by Asgard sensors.

She would need to figure out just what the help those were later on. If she was going with the 'voices are part of her power' theory, she needed to a certain just what _kind_ of voices they were.

Her world didn't exactly have a good history with capes who heard voices. The Butcher and The Fairy Queen being just two well known examples.

The fact those capes happened to be _ludicrously_ powerful seemingly in exchange Taylor pushed to the side for now.

" _There, see?_ " Vala presented smugly. " _I told you. I was_ right!"

" _Vala, a girl cannot be a starship!_ " Sam lamented, sighing.

Vala stepped closer to the sensor screen and pointed. " _Well then you tell me, Sam, how the outside of the Odyssey shows a Tau'ri school?_ "

The three of them stared at her for several seconds, dumbfounded.

Then they reluctantly stepped over to the screen.

And stared it for several more seconds. Sam was the one having the hardest time accepting what her eyes were telling her, given the look of absolute disbelief on her face.

" _Holy Hannah,_ " Cameron exclaimed.

Sam's eyes widened. She looked at the ceiling again. " _Um… Taylor?_ "

" _What?_ " Taylor replied, wary of them yelling again, even as she closed out of the molecular scan she'd accidentally started running on them.

" _Where are you right now?_ " she asked, the struggle to believe Taylor's sensors still quite clear.

" _I-I'm on the floor outside my locker,_ " she said, choking up. " _Hugging my knees._ "

The four of them looked back down at her sensor screen.

" _That certainly looks like a pair of legs and arms hugging them,_ " Daniel dryly remarked.

" _This is impossible!_ " Sam refuted. " _Ships… don't just suddenly become humans!_ "

" _Oh no, no, but humans and ships shrinking,_ " Daniel snarked back, pushing his glasses back up his nose, " _that's,_ that's _okay?_ "

" _Uh, guys?"_ Cameron asked, interrupting the bickering non siblings. He tapped a section of the screen. It zoomed in on Taylor's arm. " _What's that?_ "

Taylor hurriedly hid her arm out of view of that particular visual sensor- _eye_. " _Nothing._ "

Vala's face darkened. " _It looked like feminine refuse, Cam,_ " she said.

Taylor began whimpering and curled in on herself further. Vala had- she'd brought up something Taylor was trying very hard to forget. She was trying to scrutinize her new teammates, not… not melt down.

But everything was finally catching up to her, overriding the shock she'd experienced at the various feats of absurdity she had suddenly become capable of. The contemplation that her sister… _ex-_ sister, now, especially after this, had tried to _kill her._

She wasn't in the best headspace, and the torrent of tears that erupted from her eyes, washing over her visual sensors- her _eyes,_ to drip onto the cold school's floor, proved it. She couldn't focus on her scans anymore. Couldn't do anything but hug herself and cry.

The thought to appear as anything other than how emotionally fucked up she was at that moment never entered her head. She believed the voices in her head to be only that, after all. Just voices. Mastering or parts of her power, they were just… _voices._

The _people_ on board Taylor were silent. They'd noticed her plight, through the sensor screens. The four members of the premier team of intergalactic explorers, each battle-hardened warriors and seasoned negotiators, looked to each other in silent dares to be the first one to breach the topic.

It inevitably fell to the less reserved woman present. Vala shot a narrow eyed glare at Sam, Daniel, and Cameron, but closed her eyes and sighed with acceptance.

" _Taylor,"_ Vala hesitantly spoke up, laying a comforting hand on the console in front of her, a gesture that Taylor _somehow felt_ , " _what happened?_ "

Taylor's breath hitched in her chest. She hastily wiped her eyes in an attempt to get the tears to go away. " _N-Nothing,_ " she half heartedly stammered.

" _You don't seem like the kind of person who cries over nothing,_ " she fired back.

Taylor had nothing to say. She just continued to sob, trying and failing to do so silently. Her continual leg hugging had reached the point that her sublight engines engaged. Due to a quirk of her new- _old-_ **merged** existence, their output was dumped straight into shoving her reconfigured hangar bays - _arms_ against her legs.

Taylor jolted a bit with surprise. Her legs. She- she thought of them as her _legs_ first. She didn't have to correct herself.

The advent of that little bit of normal in her otherwise insane new existence broke what little control she had left. Taylor curled in further, stressing her shields, and hid her face in her knees. She proceeded to let the pain, sorrow, and misery of her last two years out through choked sobs and muted wailing.

It was a very long time before she stopped.

* * *

**A/N: Sup! Like I told a few people in PM, Shipping It is now a proper story. My other stories aren't dead, but if I limit myself to trying to write _only_ for those stories or plot bunnies, well... the recent month-long hiatus should demonstrate why that is completely ineffective. If I try to force my muse, I can't write, and I figure it's better to work on what I can so that eventually I can swing back around through them all.**


	2. Welcome to Bet

Shipping It Stargate Style

**Chapter 2**

_Welcome to Bet_

" _Taylor?_ " Vala hesitantly spoke up. She hadn't stopped massaging the engineering console. The soothing feelings of another human's touch that washed over the new ship girl when she did that had helped Taylor keep from breaking down completely.

" _Y-Yeah?_ " she sniffled. She was rubbing her eyes with her hands, trying to get rid of the blurry vision her tears caused.

" _Will you tell us what happened now?_ "

Taylor instinctively began to vehemently shake her head… and stopped.

What was the harm, exactly?

They were voices. And part of her powers. She'd basically be talking to herself.

It was just Emma's mental hooks that made her afraid of examining her own emotions.

 _Huh._ Taylor had just discovered that she had a human _and_ Asgard psychology database. Those would be pretty useful in the future.

She shook her head one final time and gave in. " _Okay,_ " she agreed.

Vala blinked with surprise. " _Wait, really?_ "

" _Y-Yeah. Gotta tell somebody and you're just voices in my head that come from my powers so I'd basically be talking to myself,_ " Taylor reasoned. She put a hand on the ground and pushed off. Incredibly small thrusts of her sublight engines accompanied the action.

However, even at such a low thrust, the reaction was not what she was anticipating. As Cameron had once said: 'this tub only goes so slow.'

Granted that was on her sister ship the _Daedalus_ , one who hadn't yet had all the Asgard upgrades she now contained, _and_ she resented being called a tub, but the point was valid!

Also, she had sister ships? Those might be other people nearby who'd triggered at the same time as she did. Multi-triggers did usually get similar powers.

Taylor's small bout of introspective curiosity promptly ceased as her engines flared and ended up making her perform a large tumble into the air. She reoriented towards the planet's surface via some automatic alignment processes she didn't even know she _had_ and landed in the stereotypical three point superhero impact pose.

In a slight dent in the concrete school floor.

Taylor's eyes shot wide open as she scrambled to her feet.

Both she and her crew were speechless. Taylor because she was examining her hands, legs, and engines in awed wonder, and her crew because of what she just did.

" _Okay. I'm going to need someone to pinch me_ ," Daniel announced.

" _Tell me we didn't just see our ship, who is also now a girl, crater pavement by landing on it,_ " Cameron continued, shocked to hell and back.

Vala shook her head, never ceasing her ministrations of Taylor's engineering console. " _Can't do that, love._ "

" _Why not?_ " Cameron challenged her sarcastically.

Sam owned the pair of the widest eyes out of the four of them, not counting Taylor. " _Because that_ is _what just happened, Cam._ " She blinked and raised a hand to rub her forehead. " _I don't know how it happened, but that is what happened._ "

"Holy shit," Taylor lamented. A genuine grin was starting to grow on her lips. She clenched her fists and felt the raw _power_ available to her.

And then, something just… _clicked._

The building pressure in her head and the weight on her soul she hadn't even known were there evaporated. Taylor Hebert suddenly felt fully like the Odyssey, and the Odyssey felt like Taylor Hebert.

Her massive generators, both Human and Asgard, thrummed alongside the pulse of her blood. Their energies were waiting to be called to the various weapon emplacements she carried on her arms and legs. Her new heart was ready to direct a torrent of raw energy towards her shields, her engines, and even prepared to channel into her Hyperdrive so that she could rip the fabric of spacetime open and launch herself into a realm where her top speed was ridiculously higher. She even had the ability to launch flights of F-302 fighters from the hangar bays wrapped around her arms.

As she had done so many times before.

Or, well, the Odyssey had.

Her crew. Well, what was left of them. She now knew for a _fact_ they weren't just voices. They were four out of five total members of the premier team of Earth's intergalactic explorers, SG1. Their fifth member, Teal'c, had escaped the temporal reversal by hiding inside an isolation field Sam had her create.

He was probably back in the Odyssey's original universe. On a duplicate of the ship that had merged with Taylor.

That existence was gone now. Her crew might not realize it, but she did. Her scans of their surroundings had easily found the difference in the quantum signature of her new reality. That… sort of explained what had happened to her. Just a little. Or at least provided a remotely plausible explanation in a scenario almost completely devoid of one.

Nobody ever said cross-reality travel was simple.

But she was also Taylor. Her original human body was still there. Overlaid upon her hull. Their quantum signatures matched perfectly.

Earth Bet was the Odyssey's reality now. _Taylor_ was the Odyssey now. Moreover, it seemed her ship self had never really truly formed and was thus anchoring, pun unintended, onto her existence as Taylor. That… _melding_ being incomplete was what had felt _off_ before. And it had just finished.

Taylor relaxed her hands and spread her fingers. She easily located the emission ports of her Asgard Plasma Beam Weapons in the center of her palms. The devastating weapons were slightly hidden in another layer of reality, but that wasn't really a difficult obstacle for her sensors to cut through.

Her eyes traveled over the new location and shape of her primary hangar bays, an eyebrow raising at the sheer _scale_ of the modifications needed to make them fit a humanoid body. They were wrapped around her forearms, underneath, almost like reverse gauntlets. On top of those same forearms were her primary railgun decks, also resembling gauntlets.

Her primary bridge sat atop her head like an abnormally flat, angular disk shaped hat. The large sheet of hull that served as the flattop of her class was split in two. One half sat astride each of her shoulders like pauldrons. Her secondary bridge, or flight control tower depending on which designer you asked, was on top of the left pauldron. The comm arrays that used to be on her nose now poked up past her ear from the right pauldron.

Taylor's missile silos had been relocated to a sort of backpack on her back, sticking up just past her shoulders. If she leaned her head back they could serve as a rather uncomfortable headrest. The weird backpack and the two extended arms coming off it and wrapping around her sides were the majority of her hull that wasn't part of her human body. They were connected by stylized versions of the massive extendable pylons that served to anchor her hangar bays to her main hull back when she was first built.

Because apparently whatever cosmic bullshit that had merged her with… her, had a sense of style.

As for her engines, they were distributed to different places on her new, old form. She was wearing what felt and looked like thigh high stomping boots with high heels but they were sections of her rear hull instead. Each heel housed the new location of one of her two primary sublight thrusters. Four out of three remaining six secondary thrusters were clustered around those primaries, two on each side, leading her heels to look thicker. The other two faced backwards along the outside of her forearms and had merged with her hangar/railgun deck gauntlets. Even though she looked like she was wearing short heels in one layer of reality, her sneakered feet were flat on the ground in… the real one?

Finally her hyperdrive emitters stuck out of the bottom of her backpack. They actually made it look sorta like one of those retro style jetpacks people thought were going to be all the rage back in the sixties.

In fact… Taylor almost felt like if she really wanted to, she could _pull_ on her heavily modified ship self, manifest it around her humanoid body somehow. Then she would walk like she was wearing heels, because then she would be. At the moment… she wasn't?!

And… all of the bullshit that was her new form was giving her a powerful headache just trying to comprehend, much less make sense of. She decided to hold off on even _attempting_ to continue mapping her new body or hull shape until she was recovered.

Taylor shook her head to rid her mind of the confusing information. She was in one piece, more or less, and that's what counted. She closed her eyes, clenched her fists again, and chuckled mirthfully.

There would be plenty of time for all of that later.

She opened her eyes and turned her heading towards the Locker. The place where her life as normal, wimpy Taylor Hebert changed forever.

And she smiled. A true, warm, happy smile. For the first time in over two years, she felt _whole._

Well, until she saw the results of the scan she ran of her locker on instinct. At that… _filth,_ she winced. But even so, that sense of _right_ remained. Whatever holes in her heart Emma, Sophia, and Madison had torn open, the Odyssey was taking the place of them. She felt _complete._

The feeling wasn't enough to fully counteract two years of extensive bullying culminating in a murder attempt but it was certainly sufficient for her to get her head in the game.

Taylor was also very thankful to whatever process merged her with the Odyssey for seemingly cleaning her, healing her injuries, and repairing her clothes.

...Although the second two _might_ just be a quirk of her new existence as a ship.

" _What the hell is that?_ " Cameron asked, drawing Taylor's attention back to the ongoing discussion of her crew.

" _Toxic waste_ ," Vala answered, scrolling down her readout. " _I don't think the Odyssey has data on exactly what kind though._ "

" _This is a school locker, right?_ " Cameron asked. " _What kind of monsters put this shit in a school locker?_ "

" _Bullies,_ " Taylor spoke out through her comm systems.

Vala's face darkened. " _Really,_ " she almost growled.

Daniel grimaced and sighed. " _That's_ your _locker,_ " he guessed, " _isn't it._ "

Taylor nodded her head. " _Yes._ "

" _Why does it look like it lost a war with a piledriver?_ " Sam asked, poking her screens a couple of times to zoom in on the warped metal of the locker.

Taylor gently laid a hand on the edge, tracing her fingers over the scratches she'd made before she had become strong enough to pancake concrete. " _In a way, it did. I wasn't very mentally present in my first few moments waking up again._ "

Her crew went dead silent while they tried to figure out what she meant.

" _Oh my gods,_ " Sam gasped, putting her hands over her mouth to keep herself from throwing up. She was the most intelligent one there. It didn't surprise Taylor that she got it first.

Vala was next and spoiled it for the boys. " _Your bullies locked you in there with that refuse?!_ " she almost screeched. Her grip on Taylor's engineering console became vicelike, her nails trying to dig into the metal and horribly failing.

" _Yeah,_ " Taylor lamented sadly, taking a moment to fold the side of the locker like it was a piece of paper, " _they did. The entire day. I eventually passed out after screaming so much my vocal cords broke. Then when I woke up, I was the Odyssey._ "

Vala tried to grip even harder. Taylor wasn't concerned, her hull was made out of a trinium-naquadah-titanium alloy. Someone would have to try a lot harder to even so much as scratch her surfaces.

Alexandria _might_ be able to give her a bruise.

Actually… No, that wouldn't work, would it?

Taylor's eyes shot wide open as she realized she was stronger, faster, and tougher than _the_ Hero known for those traits on her world. For fuck's sake, it was named the Alexandria Package for a reason!

But she outclassed the Package's namesake in pretty much every way.

As she thought about it further, of course she did. She was a _starship._ Alexandria was just a parahuman. Even more than that, Taylor was a military vessel with highly advanced, alien technology integrated into every system she had.

She would be very surprised if Alexandria could even dent her hull much less breach her shields. And given they seemed to be shaped very similar to Glory Girl's force field, clinging to her skin, she didn't have to worry about the Daedalus class' original shielding matrix's weakness of being able to get inside it.

If she really thought about it, there wasn't much that could threaten her on Earth Bet anymore. Behemoth, the dynakinetic Endbringer, and Scion were probably the only ones who could. She wasn't entirely human anymore, which hopefully negated the Simurgh from mind controlling her, and she could just pick up Leviathan and take him on a quick Hyperspace trip to the black hole in the center of the galaxy.

Taylor's eyes widened to their maximum when the final, full realization hit her.

She wasn't just a cape now. She… she could make a difference. A worldwide one.

Right. Time for her to substitute the lack of discipline she had as Taylor with what she seemed to have picked up as Odyssey. With her level of power comes not just great but _massive_ responsibility.

" _SG1,_ " she interrupted her crew's raging against her tormentors. While it _was_ therapeutic, there were more important things to discuss now.

Daniel was the one who commented. " _You know what that is?_ " he asked, surprised.

Taylor nodded and reached out for the perfect impression of her face she'd left in the locker wall. " _Of course. I am the Odyssey, after all,_ " she informed them. A small part of her attention was on the metal in her hands as she moulded it as easily as she might do so to clay.

Another small part of her attention was marveling at the fact that she was that strong.

Her sublight engines seemed to translate directly into her humanoid strength. Which, upon thinking about it, made her _obscenely_ strong.

Eighty percent of lightspeed in five seconds. A velocity change of sixty _million_ meters per second, or roughly 197 _million_ feet.

And she wasn't exactly a light ship to move, either.

Taylor paid much, much more attention to the thrust on her hands after that revelation.

" _I thought you were Taylor._ " He did have a good point.

" _Yeah, what the heck? You went from denying it to talking like it's fact!_ " Cameron chimed in.

Vale and Sam were suspiciously silent. The former just kept massaging her console. The latter was clearly still trying not to gag.

" _I was confused and scared,_ " Taylor told them, beginning to explain. Her face in the locker's metal was completely unrecognizable now, and so she turned her attention to widening the hole she made with her hull when she accidentally thrust backwards. " _I was still finishing up my merge with the Odyssey. Now, I'm whole._ "

" _Y-Your merge with the-the Odyssey,_ " Sam finally spoke, hesitantly, brokenly, but her deadpan tone was still obvious. She appeared to be at the end of her rope.

" _Yeah. I'm Taylor Hebert, human, but also now the U.S.A.F. X-304 Daedalus Class DSC_ Odyssey," she continued to explain. Yet again, both names rang true in what she guessed was her soul. The deepest, most intimate part of her. Something beyond flesh. Beyond hull.

Huh. Was she starting on the path to Ascension? Something to pay attention to.

" _I continue to reiterate this is impossible,_ " Sam protested, crossing her arms and glaring at the sensor screen which persistently told her very differently.

Before any of them could break out into bickering again, Taylor continued. " _At least now I know you're not just voices, you're actually my crew._ _And_ _I have bad news to tell you, unfortunately._ " The new ship girl drew in a deep breath and let it out in an attempt to steel (hah!) herself. " _We're not in your original universe anymore._ "

Daniel sighed, closed his eyes, and rubbed his nose. " _Damn it._ "

" _What do you mean… Taylor?_ " Sam asked, suddenly laser focused.

Because of course miss science geek would be interested in this situation beyond the fact they weren't in the Odyssey's home universe. Taylor rolled her eyes and chuckled at the legendary woman's just as legendary scientific interest.

" _Simply put, I, Taylor Hebert, am native to a universe that isn't the same as the one you four and the Odyssey, which is now also me, come from_ ," Taylor began explaining with more depth. The hole in the wall behind the locker was now almost big enough to drive a small car through. Any evidence of her body shape was gone. She took a moment to step out of the Locker, fire the Asgard Beams on very, very low power in order to vaporize the toxic waste, and nod at her success.

Specifically, the success that was firing anti-capital-ship plasma weapons at a small enough diameter and low powered enough to _only_ vaporize the toxic waste, instead of, say, ten miles of bedrock. On her _first try,_ no less!

 _Man._ Her new power set really wasn't remotely what some on PHO dubbed most of the powers in her city. _Street_ level? If she went too fast in atmosphere she could set it on _fire!_

Taylor shuddered at that thought and immediately promised herself she'd never, ever do so.

There was just one more step to cover her tracks. If it was only her locker which was destroyed the effect would be just the same as walking straight up to the villains, heroes, and 'adoring' public, and announcing her identity to the world.

Taylor wasn't sure if she wanted to take that step yet. _And_ she was dreading the future conflicts of interest given she was a U.S.A.F. vessel. The military of Bet's U.S. might not notice though. Hopefully.

It's not as if her designation was plastered across the side of her hull for all to see or anything.

Oh, right, yeah, that was false. _Someone_ was going to notice. Taylor was thus going to have to decide just where her loyalties lay, and with whom, or if anywhere or anyone even qualified.

She began ripping the doors off random lockers around the hallway. " _I've run scans of my Taylor Hebert body's quantum signature, my ship hull's signature, and the signatures of all of you,_ " she continued. " _They're identical. And they're pretty different from the records I have of the quantum signatures we_ used _to have._ "

Sam and Daniel groaned and cursed, respectively.

Vala and Can were clueless. " _What?_ " he asked.

" _We are in a different universe than yours,_ " Taylor dumbed down for them. She stepped back to admire her finished handiwork (or was that thrusterwork, now?) that was the almost completely decimated hallway.

" _Alternate reality,_ " Cam joked, miming checking something off a list on an invisible clipboard, " _check. Just gotta get snaked, transformed, aged, die and come back, and get mistaken for an evil deity to finish my SG1 bingo!_ "

" _Hey!_ " the rest of SG1 denied. In concert.

Taylor chuckled at his joke. It was funny just because of how accurate it was. If you had access to SG1's uncensored files like she did, you'd find it funny too. All of those happened to them with alarming frequency.

She tuned out her crew's discussion once more to conduct a more in depth scan of what she'd done. The school's hall was decimated. Locker doors were all over the floor in various stages of violent disassembly. A couple of the rows barely even existed.

And the only fingerprints to be found looked like her hull. Segmented metal. Taylor would feel robbed of a part of her identity given her new fingerprints, but close examination of her fingertips revealed she still had her human print patterns. So she could… switch them, apparently?

She'd love to see the PRT figure out _that._

Taylor brushed her hands against each other and placed them on her hips. She congratulated herself on a job well done, nodding at the chaos.

Then she turned around and strode right out of the school into the chilly night. Or… supposedly chilly. That's what her sensors said. It didn't feel cold to her. She wasn't sure if that was her shields protecting her or arm aspect of her new existence, but she didn't really care. It was nice.

Even without a temperature change, passing through her locker and the missing brick wall behind it felt like the beginning of a new journey for her.

Taylor Hebert was reborn as the _U.S.A.F. Odyssey,_ and the world would never be the same.


	3. Go For Launch

Shipping It Stargate Style

**Chapter 3**

_Go for Launch_

Taylor gazed up at the night sky. It was a deep blue, almost black. The view was immensely pretty. Her new eyes, her sensors, were just so incredibly... _powerful_. Every shade of every color was visible to her.

 _And_ some that _weren't_ colors.

She... could see the entire electromagnetic spectrum! The additions to her sight turned the normally dim night sky into a kaleidoscopic vista of beauty and elegance.

Such an _amazing_ view. Way better than her old eyes.

The ones that needed glasses.

Taylor raised a hand to her face and pressed against the bridge of her nose as if she was adjusting a pair of the vision correcting optics.

But she wasn't.

Taylor didn't _need_ them anymore.

A small perk of her **merge** with the Odyssey that she just couldn't get over. Compared to everything else it didn't even rate mentioning… yet she couldn't stop marvelling at that simple little difference.

The lack of glasses, of the _need_ for them, was like a shock of cold water to her system. It hammered home just how _unlike_ her previous human existence she now was.

Another deceptively simple difference was her visual range. Now Taylor could see every star in the sky. Every nebula. Hell, every _photon_ coming in from the far off celestial bodies. It almost felt as if she could reach out… and grab them.

She suddenly realized she _had_ reached towards the heavens with a hand and attempted to cup what she knew to be Alpha Centauri. The part of her that was the Odyssey was _anxious_ to return to her home environment.

"Heh," she snickered, shaking her head. "Soon. Atmosphere first, then a galactic tour. Baby steps Taylor. Baby steps." She consoled herself with the fact that, eventually, after she had gotten a handle on her new life, she would allow herself a vacation. Amongst the black.

But that was in the future. Taylor had a set of powers that _desperately_ needed calibration for her new body's configuration. She had been winging it till now, but a single moment of lapsed attention was all it would take for her to accidentally flare her sublight engines too hard and cut a building, much less an enemy cape, in half.

If they survived at all.

Her actual weapons were so hilariously lethal at her new scale it was almost worthless to think of them. They were designed to destroy _starcraft_ , not wipe the floor with any and all of the comparatively very, very squishy capes. Which they would most certainly do.

Taylor from before would have said that the Endbringers or Scion would give her pause. She even believed, for a moment, that she could hear the downtrodden commentary of her former self.

She wasn't sure she would agree with that now.

Even if her weapons proved to be ineffective upon them, which given the damage the Endbringers kept suffering at the hands of powers that were barely firecrackers compared was unlikely, there were a lot of black holes in the Milky Way alone. And _she_ had a Hyperdrive.

Taylor really wasn't interested in killing people on accident. On purpose, though? …Well, there were some people that had to be removed to produce a better future. She was ready to take their lives if she had to, certainly.

But nobody else.

Unless they were the Endbringers. Those monsters deserved everything and anything she could deliver. If they were even people at all...

That was a definite change from her pathos as Taylor. She was ready to do what had to be done. Take down those that deserved it, eliminate acceptable targets. Defend the innocent and brutally put down any oppressors she might come across.

It was the mindset of a soldier.

Fitting, really, for she was now a military vessel. It felt… _right._

Just like the rest of her.

Unlike her previous worries she knew it wasn't a case of her becoming Mastered. Her new existence was the blended result of essentially two people. Taylor, and the Odyssey.

Of course her mindset would change. Hell, it had _already_ changed. She didn't curse this much before even in her own head, and she wasn't really as calculating, or hyper-observant, as now. Taylor felt she was ready for battle at any time, any place, and assured she could win handily.

It was something _beyond_ confidence. She was entirely certain of herself and her capabilities. They were both hard fact.

Taylor, who hadn't been confident in years, _reveled_ in the feeling.

Still, she needed to take those capabilities for a full test drive. She had the perfect place to run herself through her paces, too. There really was only one close by area available with the lack of possible collateral damage she required. She needed to develop safeguards for the techniques of… starship girl, name tentative, combat.

Even as much as it pained her ship half, Taylor would have to use the Boat Graveyard to conduct her examinations.

It's not like those old boats were doing anything else anyways. They were probably insane from boredom, pain, and sorrow. If they were alive like she was then she would be putting them out of their misery. If not, it wouldn't matter.

No ship wanted to feel unwanted. That, Taylor was _certain_ of. Odyssey might not have formed a mind, but her soul was there, and so were her instincts.

Now they were Taylor's instincts. And she would feel hopeless if she wasn't wanted.

The less said about how she had been bullied, and its effects on her self worth as Taylor, the better.

" _Taylor?_ " Vala spoke into her intercom.

Taylor most certainly did _not_ jump. She was a professional.

" _Sorry,_ " the ex thief managed to get out over her chuckling and the klanging red alert system Taylor had activated on instinct.

Over in her aft hangar Sam and Cam were startled out of their review of her suspiciously full complement of F-302 Aerospace Superiority Fighters. " _Oddy-_ " Sam began, before she realized what she was saying. " _Taylor, turn that off!_ "

Taylor left it on a few more seconds just to needle the scientist.

" _I was thinking. Vala startled me. Sorry Sam, Cam,_ " she apologized over the intercom in her hangar.

Sam waved her off and dug her nose back into the diagnostics. " _This doesn't make any sense…_ " she mumbled.

Yeah, because becoming a ship from another universe totally _did_.

Taylor shook her head and chuckled.

" _No worries Taylor, we're all still getting used to this,_ " Cam reassured her.

Taylor found herself smiling. Hey, an attractive guy was trying to make her feel better. It was nice. So what if that guy was a little smaller than normal and inside her…

The brand new starship girl blushed at the route her thoughts had taken. She shook her head to clear it of anything remotely lewd. " _Thanks, Cam._ "

" _No problem. We're a team_. _Just… with the ship on it too._ "

He was taking everything remarkably well, Taylor noted. She turned her attention to finding Daniel to apologize to him too… but she found he literally hadn't noticed. He was back in the Asgard Presentation Room and his head might as well have been underwater for all she could to to reach him.

Taylor couldn't help herself. She snorted with amusement at, as Jack O'Neill frequently called him within her hull, her Spacemonkey's antics.

" _Yes, Vala?_ " she finally asked the original cause of this whole series of mishaps.

Vala but her lip and shifted her eyes around for a few moments. Finally she sighed. " _What does it… feel like?_ " she asked hesitantly.

Taylor blinked. " _What does what feel like?_ " she asked in return.

" _Being a ship._ "

Oh. " _...Oh._ "

She had to think about that for a little bit. What did being her… _feel_ like?

Freeing. Amazing. Incredible! Confidence she lacked in her human life was now hers, she was possibly one of the most powerful people on her planet, and she… she just felt _right_ , in a way she hadn't ever felt before.

" _I dunno, Vala, it's…_ " she began, tailing off. " _It's hard to describe._ "

Vala smiled in a knowing way, patting Taylor's hull plate next to the intercom she was using. " _That's okay. I get it_." She tried, but the disappointment was evident in her voice.

" _No, no! I'm.. just trying to find a way to express it,_ " Taylor insisted, cutting off Vala's incoming and infamous pout. " _It's… like nothing I've ever felt before. Heh, obviously, but still. I feel… free, and_ right _, and just so many other things at the same time. I'm confident now. I feel powerful. The thrum of my engines and my reactors flows throughout my body at the same time as I feel my pulse. My shields tickle as they touch and filter the atmosphere. My engines slightly flare every time I take a step. I see beyond anything I ever have, even as I can see the normal world, too. It's… liberating, compared to being human._ "

Vala nodded, her face brightening up. " _It sounds incredible,_ " she said.

" _It is._ "

Vala nodded again and deftly caressed Taylor's hull for a moment. " _Thanks for telling me, Taylor,_ " the ex thief said." _I don't know how long it might take for the others to fully understand this new situation, what with you being our ship and all, but I'm here if you ever need someone to talk to._ "

That brought warmth flooding through Taylor. She shivered a bit despite it not being cold. Those words… they resonated somewhere deep within her very being.

_Our ship._

" _T-Thanks, Vala,_ " Taylor replied, trying to keep the stuttering out of her voice.

" _You're welcome._ " A final tender pat on her hull and Vala was off down the hallway, presumably to the mess hall to grab something to eat.

Taylor hastily and almost automatically checked her food stores. After over half a century her admittedly quite expansive cargo bays dedicated to food storage were likely almost empty despite how much they normally held.

Wait… what?

They were… full?

That was odd. Taylor distinctly remembered them running out soon, back when she was The Odyssey only.

...On further thought, Taylor hadn't felt hungry at all since she escaped the Locker. She was in there all day, and after 60 years the Odyssey should also be really low on fuel… which apparently equated each other in her new existence, somehow...

So why wasn't she hungry?

A quick check of her Naquadriah storage found it to be completely, _totally_ full, too.

Okay, this was starting to get weird.

Any weirder than turning into a starship? No, but still weird.

On a hunch, Taylor started checking _everything_.

Her Naquadriah generators were nearly full. It seemed like they had only used enough fuel to match the time since she became a ship.

Her ammo magazines for all types of weaponry were full. From the complete stock of every mark of nuclear missile, to the naquadah fuel in the limited Goa'uld weapons she had on board, all the way down to the last gun's internal magazine in her armory, _it was all completely full._

And… so was her ZPM.

What.

Hold up, since when did she have a ZPM on board? The Asgard Neutrino Ion Generators had been used to power the temporal bubble in her home universe. She _knew_ she wasn't deployed to Orilla with one of that humanity's very tiny supply of very drained Ancient power sources on board, much less a completely full one!

What the fuck!

" _Sam,_ " she spoke up in her hangar, " _I've discovered something… possibly alarming, but mostly just very very weird._ "

Sam jolted up from her code inspection. " _Yes Taylor? What's wrong?_ "

" _I have a full, literally full, ZPM plugged in._ "

Sam stared at the ceiling of her hangar for way longer than she should have.

" _Excuse me?_ " Cam said.

" _Come again?_ " Sam asked, at the same time.

Both sounded completely disbelieving.

" _Yeah, I don't believe it either. But that is what my systems tell me,_ " Taylor insisted.

" _Maybe something went wrong in whatever the process that turned you into… you, was,_ " Sam reasoned.

" _I can see inside myself with my sensors, Sam, but I would appreciate you two taking a look,_ " Taylor said. She managed to keep herself from allowing the sudden trembling that had taken over her body from affecting her voice.

Sam pulled her tablet's leads out of the computer core of the Drone 302. " _We're on our way._ "

* * *

" _You've been quiet for too long_ ," Taylor stated. She was worried.

Cam and Sam had entered the auxiliary power source room off Taylor's Main Engineering, took one look at the glowing yellow crystal in its socket, and proceeded to do nothing more than stare at it with disbelief.

" _That's impossible_ ," Sam finally announced.

" _So it's real?_ " Taylor asked. " _My sensors aren't wrong?_ "

Can hesitantly, slowly, reached forward. He first poked the ZPM, gently, then tapped it, and finally laid his hand on top. One pat of its head was clearly all he could take, because he pulled his hand back as of it was burnt.

" _Oh yeah_ ," he sarcastically confirmed, " _it's real_."

Sam brought a hand to the side of her head and began massaging her temple. Clearly she had a headache from the sheer impossibility. " _And it's full?_ " she asked Taylor.

" _That's what my power system reports, yes,_ " Taylor agreed.

" _I thought Earth didn't have a full one of these,_ " Cam brought up.

" _We don't… didn't,_ " Sam confirmed. " _And even if we somehow_ did _, it wouldn't be on the Odyssey._ "

" _It's not just the ZPM, Sam,_ " Taylor revealed, grimacing.

Sam blinked, looked up at the ceiling, and frowned. " _What do you mean, Taylor?_ "

" _I'm full. Completely._ "

Sam furrowed her eyebrows. " _Wha-?_ "

" _Naquadriah, my reactors, food stores, missiles, railgun ordnance, a full complement of Mark I all the way through Mark IX Naquadah and Naquadriah enhanced fission devices, quite a few Horizon platforms, and at least eight of something my sensors yelled at me as stupidly classified that look suspiciously like your prototype Mark X warheads,_ " Taylor listed off. " _Hell, even my_ food stores _, the liquid naquadah in the staff weapons, and the fucking last bullet of the last damned gun in my armories are full!_ "

Sam just stood there, staring at nothing in wide eyed disbelief.

" _Okay,_ " Cam commented, " _even I know that's impossible._ "

" _I don't think my sensors are at fault Cam_ ," Taylor refuted. " _There's this… you two are gonna think I'm crazy._ "

Seeing as Sam was still attempting to process Taylor's dump of ludicrous information, Can fielded the conversation. " _Any crazier than turning into a ship from a human?_ "

Taylor sighed, shaking her head. " _Maybe._ "

" _Like Sam said earlier, all of us are learning about our new situation. The more we know the better we can figure out what to do,_ " Cam calmly explained.

Taylor breathed in deep. She exhaled, then nodded her head decisively. " _Okay. This is gonna sound insane, but… I_ feel _full, Cam, Sam._ "

Cam's eyebrows rose. " _What do you mean?_ " he asked.

" _Just what I said. I feel full,_ " Taylor repeated. " _I'm not hungry. At all._ "

Cam blinked. " _...And?_ "

Taylor huffed with irritation. " _Cam, I was locked in my locker without food, throwing up, for hours. I should be feeling_ some _kind of hunger._ "

Cam's eyebrows rose even higher as he realized what she meant. " _Oh. But you don't._ "

" _But I don't. And it seems like I'm completely full in almost literally every way a ship can be. Fuel, weapons, stocks, auxiliary addons. I even have an extra flight of 302s in my secondary bays._ "

Realization struck Cam then. " _You think the two are related somehow?_ "

Taylor nodded. " _It fits. Somehow. Feels accurate to my ship instincts too._ "

Cam looked back down from the ceiling, then at Sam, and back to the ceiling. " _Ship instincts, huh?_ _Maybe. That's something we'll have to test._ " He moved a hand in front of Sam's face and waved.

The resident astrophysicist snapped out of her unfocused state so fast that if Taylor wasn't a ship she'd have gotten whiplash. " _Don't do that!_ " Sam exclaimed, smacking Cam's hand away.

Immediately afterwards she groaned and held her head. " _My head's killing me,_ " she groaned.

Cam frowned while Taylor instantly became worried. He didn't even have to open his mouth.

" _The medbay is also completely stocked. Go._ "

Cam nodded and put an arm around Sam to support her. " _Come on Sam. Let's get you checked out_."

And while the two of them trundled down Taylor's hallways… all she could do was worry.

* * *

Thankfully the scans showed nothing wrong with Sam. The stress of so much illogical, worldview defying bullshit finally just made her brain decide it had enough.

Taylor understood the feeling. If she didn't have the confidence and surety of self from her Odyssey half, she'd lose it too.

" _Sorry for the pain, Sam,_ " Taylor apologized.

Sam waved her off with the hand that wasn't holding the ice pack to her head. " _Don't worry about it. None of this is your fault_."

Taylor smiled at that. " _Thanks_."

" _Not that I'm against discovering a lot more highly interesting things while we sit in the same spot all night,"_ Vala interrupted over the intercom, " _but maybe standing outside the sight of such wanton destruction until some kind of authorities arrive to arrest is for it isn't the brightest of ideas?_ "

Sam and Cam looked at each other. Cam shrugged and Sam winced.

" _She has a point,_ " Sam admitted.

Cam sighed. " _I know. Taylor, we should get out of here._ "

Taylor felt like she could be happy no matter where she was or what she was doing as long as she had her crew to talk to, but relented nonetheless. She still had those tests to get to. " _You're right,_ " she grudgingly agreed. " _As much as I don't like the idea of it, you're right, and so is Vala. Moreover I need to figure out how to fight in this new form._ "

Cam raised his eyebrows. " _Why? Last time I checked, this is Earth. Maybe not our Earth, but a starship is overkill for any domestic problems._ "

Taylor scoffed. " _Be that as it may, I cannot end up killing those I fight because of it. I need new safeguards. The ones from my ship form ate worthless at my new size._ "

" _Who could you possibly be fighting?_ "

" _Enemy capes._ "

That time it wasn't just Cam who asked. " _What?_ " Sam asked along with him. " _Capes? Like, superheroes?"_

" _And villains,_ " Taylor confirmed.

Sam looked at Can with disbelief. He mirrored her look. After a couple of seconds, Cam cracked a grin and looked at the ceiling once more. " _Nice one, Taylor. You got us. I have to admit, first time I've been pranked by a starship, but you got us._ "

Taylor remained silent as she walked around, looking for a good spot to lift off from.

Her lack of a response said everything.

Cam's grin evaporated from his face. Sam groaned with defeat, sagged to the medical bed, and just put her hands over her eyes.

" _You've got to be kidding,_ " Cam exclaimed. Almost pleading.

" _Nope_ ," Taylor denied. She looked at the sky and plotted the cloud cover so she could enter into it when she got high enough.

" _Your Earth has SUPERHEROES?!_ "

" _And supervillains. And Endbringers,_ " Taylor continued to inform them.

Sam's only response was a muted scream of despair.

Can didn't say anything. He just stared at her hull.

Taylor grinned. Her first successful prank on her crew had worked. And age was in the perfect spot to take off with minimal to no evidence of something like a starship having been there in the first place.

The human starship concentrated on engaging her sublight engines just enough to lift off the ground. They happily complied, ticking up to only _two_ thousandths of a percent engaged.

Taylor's sneakers left the ground. She began to rise into the air above her school, head raised high and chin out. The low, rhythmic thrum of her engines rang out into the night in a comforting drone. On a whim she stuck both her arms forward, fists clenched, and soared into the night sky.

Any whoops of glee she would deny vehemently.

She was the Odyssey. Nobody could ever take that from her. She dared the entire universe to go right ahead and _try._

Not even the Endbringers would be capable of it.

* * *

Brockton Bay was pretty at night, from the sky. All the dim lights from the homes of less well off residents to the lofty high rises and businesses closer to the Boardwalk lit up Taylor's sensors like the Fourth of July.

They formed a pattern almost like that of an organism. Thousands of little beacons of hope, collectively warding beck the darkness.

A muffled _**boom**_ rippled out through the air around her. Taylor instantly took her attention off the great view and investigated the cause.

Oh.

That was the sound barrier.

She reduced her speed with a sheepish chuckle.

" _Sam, mind making an expected thrust calculations change? I just accidentally'd the sound barrier before I managed to throttle up more than another thousandth. I can't really do that next to other capes, most won't be able to survive._ "

Another wordless, strangled scream echoed from her medbay.


	4. 2019 XMas Crossover Special Part 1

The Fourth Ancient Shipping XMas Special

**Part 1**

_This Is Actually, Really The First One_

"You gonna fight us?" I directly asked Armsmaster five seconds before he'd work up the nerve to ask me the same thing, grinning wide. "Because I don't think I can take the person whose logo is on my underwear seriously."

Dead.

Fucking.

_Silence._

Armsmaster's jaw was totally dropped.

Assault looked like he was torn between cowering in terror and laughing his ass off. Even Miss Militia was having trouble keeping a straight face. Poor Dauntless looked like his brain had evacuated the premises. Velocity had his face in his hand.

And then the silence was interrupted by a sound I can only describe as the universe gaining a new hole. A wormhole the size of the Bay opened up in the sky above us, the fabric of spacetime almost boiling under the immense stress.

And then out of the opening something emerged, rapidly decelerating from the blur it was into a recognizable form.

A massive metal snowflake hung in the sky above me, and I immediately knew this wasn't a primary timeline anymore.

"Great. XMas Special time."

Ziz turned to me and her eyes widened in terror.

"Ben, you better go find a tree."

Ben merely nodded at me and sank back into the Earth. His body quickly began accelerating through the crust towards Canada.

Guess when you need a tree, go to the source?

* * *

I sat in the command throne of Atlanta, reviewing the sensor logs of the transit.

The Wormhole Drive was supposed to jump us into the sky above the Bay. That part worked.

But that sky was noticeably missing my fleet of Auroras.

And the other 'fleet' of observers from all over the world. They weren't there either.

"Atlanta, what the hell happened?"

The avatar of my cityship, a young woman who looked _suspiciously_ like my sister, wavered into existence next to my command throne.

"I don't know, Chancellor," she informed me, seeming puzzled. "We made the transit as we were supposed to. We are where we were supposed to end up. Right above the Bay. It's the same city, but… our escorts are no longer here.

I made to reply but found that alerts were going off in my mind.

I tuned in to what they were trying to tell me. Atlanta was apparently under attack.

…

From… Taylor Hebert? A _much younger_ Taylor than the one who had become Queen of the rogue constructors, too.

One who was hovering under her own power outside the shield, and knocking on it _hard enough to trigger defense alerts._

"Hi!" she cheerfully said, somehow knowing that she had my attention. "Would you mind getting this eyesore into the actual bay so we can talk and get on with this special?"

I blinked, trying very hard to parse what she'd just said.

" _Eyesore?!_ " Atlanta repeated, extremely offended.

I sighed and shook my head. "Open the shield to her, let's see what she has to say. And I need to know what the hell she means by Special."

Atlanta grumbled, but did as I asked. The immensely powerful force matrix of her shield wavered just a little on the spot in front of Taylor, and she gave us a little wave as she entered through the open matrix gate.

And headed straight for the throne room.

"At least I don't have to give her directions," I lamented.

* * *

At the same time and place as one Taylor entered a flying city, another was doing yoga.

On top of the Medhall building.

Odyssey didn't have permission for that, by Taylor didn't really care. Served Kaiser right, and she desperately needed to work out the kinks in her hull before-

" _Taylor, we've got a… a_ wormhole _on sensors,_ " Vala informed her from her bridge.

Taylor paused in the middle of stretching out her beam and froze. " _I'm sorry, did you just say wormhole?_ " she asked over her internal comms.

" _Yeah. It's right over the_ Bay," Vala confirmed. " _Check your own sensors._ "

" _But I'm trying to relax!_ " she whined. " _The snake infested space geckos were just a week ago! And my hull got some kinks in it because of that repair bath._ "

Vala scoffed and rolled her eyes. " _That bath restored your hull to perfect condition. You're just being a baby_."

" _Exactly!_ " Odyssey fired back. " _Do you know how much time it'll take me to get those dents and repair welds and esoteric particle scorched back?!_ "

Vala rolled her eyes again. " _Just look at the stupid wormhole you overgrown cruiser!_ "

Taylor manifested a tongue sticking out of her mouth in front of Vala, but did so anyways.

The results were… interesting.

" _Quantum signature on the inside is different_ ," she idly mused.

Vala's eyebrows rose. " _Really?_ " she commented, then she broke put into a grin. " _I'll get my jumpsuit_ _on!_ "

As she spun around to go do just that, Taylor scowled. " _Vala,_ " she flatly stated.

" _Taylor, I know we're going_ ," she fired back, ignoring the ship's tone. " _You'll protest for a few minutes, then get curious, and I want to be in my jumpsuit for when we rapidly transit a cross reality wormhole this time._ "

Taylor blushed all the way to her engines and toes. She hadn't exactly had the time to be gentle when they had to enter Babylon and end the Empire of the Rising Snake. Her first and so far only proper cross universal transit, other than the one that brought Screen to Taylor's universe and merged them anyways, had tossed her crew around like gumballs.

Nevertheless, she shook her head. " _Vala, I'm not going. I told you I have to do yog-_ "

The former thief cut her off and started stripping down to get ready to put on the jumpsuit Cam had designed for her. " _You're going. I know it, you know it, now stop protesting against your own self and just start towards the wormhole before it destabilizes_."

Taylor tried to speak up, even though she knew deep down that Vala was right. " _But-_

Vala began to take off her shirt and glared at the ceiling. " _Slowly. And no peeking._ "

Taylor frowned, but closed off the comes from Vala's room anyways.

Vala was the only one on board. The rest of SG1 were on a trip to Colorado Springs to talk to the Air Force about something she wasn't cleared to know about.

That something was her classification and whether they could draft her. Like she would let a little thing like clearance keep her from knowing how her crew were doing.

Needless to say, SG1 had things to say about those topics. Namely, Deep Space Carrier, and fuck no she is a person. Respectively. Though she doubted they would deliver either pieces of information with anything remotely _approaching_ respect.

Even with that plan, it was important that Vala not come with them. The rest of SG1 were going to choose to not be respectful.

Vala's _only mode_ was disrespect.

So Taylor sighed. They didn't need her for the short amount of time it would take for her to scout the other side of the wormhole and drop a stabilization gate. And Vala was right… Curiosity burned within her.

She had her beam fabrication systems materialize two stabilization gates in her hangars and reached in to pull them out, allowing the circular wristguard like devices to fasten themselves to her wrists.

Then she took off towards the wormhole.

Vala left her room in her form fitting jumpsuit and marched straight back to the bridge. When she got there, she grinned wide and with victory.

" _Knew you couldn't hold yourself back._ "

Taylor's sublight engines flared as she picked up speed. " _Shut up._ "

Vala did keep her mouth shut, but the grin spoke more than enough.

Taylor approached the wormhole, a boiling tear in reality, and held up an arm. She sent the command to one of the stabilization gate for it to deploy.

The silver wristguard enlarged just enough to fly off her hand, then exited her sphere of influence.

And with a mind melting bend of reality, it was suddenly a ring with the inner radius of five city busses stacked end to end.

It settled in around the reality breach and began to rotate, several glyphs lighting up in blue along its surface.

Then the boiling ceased, and the wormhole was safe for transit.

" _Brace for wormhole transit_ ," Taylor called out as a matter of habit.

" _Slowly!_ " Vala yelled at her.

" _Yes. Slow wormhole transit._ "

Taylor fired her engines at five thousandth of a percent and punted herself through the wormhole.

Vala took a short trip to the back of the bridge by way of flipping over herself, her small translucent wings trying and failing to steady her.

She'd be fine.

* * *

The guy was insane.

Sorry, let me back up. After the _sentient flying city_ opened up the shield capable of treating one of _my knocks_ as a light bump so I could go through, I followed my Host tracking sensors towards this room.

Within which sat a guy in a pretty alien looking throne, calling to a hologram, and that hologram was the city ship's… self.

Not only was he not remotely human, the guy had an active and _bidirectional_ connection with his Shard.

Which had expanded to _coat its entire solar system,_ and even grown a _Dyson Sphere!_

"What the hell are you?" I blurted out, crossing my arms.

I was still flying. No way would I set foot on the city ship unless I got more information.

Another thing that was worrying me was that none of my sensors beyond the ones linked to myself and Shards could see inside the shield, but one big problem at a time.

* * *

I blinked in surprise, watching a younger and curvier Taylor Hebert in jeans hover above the floor as if much as offended her.

Or like she was Victoria. Either one.

I decided to start over.

"Hello… Taylor, I assume?" I began, getting up from my throne.

Her eyebrows furrowed and her suspicion rose. It was like a candle to my senses, but it was also very far away, for some reason. "You clearly know who I am," she discerned. "Now who are you?"

It was very demanding. Much like Victoria. What was it with flying bricks and being belligerent?

"I'm Weldon, though I'm known as Shipyard," I informed her. "And before you ask, yes, I know who you are. That's because I know another version of you." I looked her up and down, then decided to tease her a little. "A skinnier version."

"Sucks for her," she fired back. "So you're from another reality?"

I nodded and gestured to Atlanta's scowling avatar. "Atlanta's wormhole drive seems to have had a small malfunction."

Taylor raised her eyebrows. "A 'small' malfunction."

I nodded. "Yep."

"Hopping universes is what you consider _small,_ " she reiterated.

"Indeed."

Taylor closed her eyes and shuddered. "And dare I ask what you consider a large one?"

Before I could respond, reality ripped open next to the command throne. A smaller wormhole, not unlike Atlanta's wormhole drive, made reality into its plaything and boiled the fabric of spacetime.

A feminine yell heralded the arrival of a young woman with brown hair, who planted herself into the deck plating.

And then with a horrifying screech of metal, kept going _straight through it,_ with an effect not that dissimilar to Atlanta's massive shield wrapped around her body to protect it.

None of us said a word even as the view of the bay's small swells became clear past the falling girl.

I finally turned around to look at the open maw of the breach in reality and sighed, putting a hand on my forehead. "That is what I consider a large one."

"My hull!" Atlanta complained.

Taylor rolled her eyes and sighed. "Fucking Tinkers."

* * *

**Merry XMas, everyone! In lieu of my further chapters which are still in the works, enjoy part one of a two or three parter XMas Interlude that crosses over three of my most popular stories. I was only able to write this much today as it was XMas, but I hope you enjoy!**


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